The present invention relates generally to the field of irrigation controllers and more particularly to integrating irrigation controllers into a communications network.
With water resources dwindling across the country the need to conserve and preserve is more prevalent as time goes on. Many local water purveyors have implemented tiered rate structures as monetary incentives to stimulate water conservation. Additionally budgetary constraints have been imposed and harsh penalties levied for those exceeding the budgetary constraints. A large user of water resources is the landscape industry. This industry can be subdivided into residential and commercial sectors. Entities in the commercial sector include municipalities that include parks, schools, and streetscapes. Other typical commercial users include: colleges and universities, homeowner associations, business parks, golf courses, cemeteries, and airports.
In many parts of the country these areas are irrigated via irrigation controllers. An irrigation controller is a timer that determines what days and times individual areas or stations are to be watered. An irrigation controller may include a microprocessor driven programmable device that retains program data and is capable of turning on and off individual 24 VAC stations or valves based upon program data resident within nonvolatile RAM. The primary goal of the landscape maintenance staff is to keep the landscapes looking lush, green, and trim. Often times this is at the expense of using excessive water. In order to conserve water, it may be necessary to properly adjust station runtimes on a weekly and often times on a daily basis. These adjustments are required due to seasonal as well as daily weather conditions at the irrigated site. Since most irrigation controllers control a large number of individual stations and an entity may have a large number of controllers, it may not be feasible to have maintenance workers performing detailed adjustments to stations on a regular basis via manual means.
A central control system is a tool which allows maintenance staff to automatically adjust irrigation controllers from a central location, namely a personal computer. In addition, central control systems may include the ability to automatically adjust irrigation schedules based on evapotranspiration values. An evapotranspiration value represents the total water loss from soil and vegetation over a predefined time period. This water loss includes water lost by direct evaporation and by transpiration from the plant surfaces.
Central control systems have been popular for more than a decade. The current shortcomings of present day central control systems include:
They usually are relatively expensive to purchase because they have many hardware pieces.
They require a level of support that the typical user does not have expertise in such as communications technology and a significant amount of custom circuitry.
Because they have many elements, namely, cables, circuit boards, connections, etc. the reliability of these systems is degraded by the sheer number of components.
Because they have many elements the service of these systems is best performed by factory trained individuals.
Only larger irrigation departments have professional staff capable of being trained to operate large and sophisticated central control systems.
These systems typically utilize one or more weather stations. The costs of these weather stations are fairly expensive.
Most systems sold today have relatively expensive software.
As a consequence of these limitations, the advantages of central controlled irrigation systems are not feasible for smaller sized systems.
A method and apparatus for Internet-enabled irrigation control. An irrigation controller is coupled to a wide area network, such as the Internet, via a wireless carrier network. The irrigation controller has a unique identifier which makes the irrigation controller addressable by an irrigation server located on the Internet. The irrigation controller is capable of stand-alone operation and may be programmed by a user communicating with the irrigation controller using the irrigation server and the wireless carrier. The user may also send immediate commands to the irrigation controller such as rain shutdown commands. In addition, the irrigation controller may transmit status messages back to the irrigation server such as irrigation station faults and excessive flow alarms. The irrigation server saves the status messages in a database for later retrieval by the user. In addition, the irrigation server may also transmit status and alarm messages to the user via email or by telephone.
In one aspect of the invention, an irrigation controller is operated over a communications network such as the Internet. The irrigation controller is coupled to a server through the communications network. The irrigation controller receives an irrigation program from the server through the communications network during a setup and configuration procedure. The irrigation controller then receives irrigation program modification data from the server through the communications network as needed. The irrigation controller modifies the irrigation program using the irrigation program modification data and generates irrigation station control signals using the modified irrigation program.
In another aspect of the invention, the irrigation program includes an irrigation station runtime and the irrigation program modification data includes weather data. The irrigation controller uses the weather data to modify the irrigation controller by recalculating the irrigation station runtime using the weather data. The kind of data included in the weather data varies depending on the needs and capabilities of the irrigation controller. In one aspect of the invention, the weather data includes evapotranspiration data. In another aspect of the invention, the weather data includes rain sensor data. In another aspect of the invention, a single weather station may be shared by a plurality of irrigation stations by the server receiving the weather data from a second irrigation controller coupled to a weather station.
In another aspect of the invention, the irrigation program modification data includes a program percent value that is used to modify the irrigation program by the irrigation controller by recalculating the irrigation station runtime using the program percent value.
In another aspect of the invention, the irrigation program may be further modified using irrigation program start times and irrigation program water days included in the irrigation program modification data.
In another aspect of the invention, the irrigation controller generates status data and transmits the status data to the server through the communications network. The server may then generate an email message using the status data and transmit the email message to an email server through the communications network.
In another aspect of the invention, a user may couple a client to the server through the communications network and transmit the irrigation program modification data to the server using the client. In another aspect of the invention, the server is coupled to a database and stores the irrigation program modification data in the database.
In another aspect of the invention, the irrigation controller receives a command from the server through the communications network and executes the command immediately.
In another aspect of the invention, the communications network includes a wireless carrier. The wireless carrier may include a network employing any wireless communications protocol such as a two-way paging wireless network, a cellular digital packets network, a code division multiple access network, a global system for mobile communications network, or a general packet radio service network.